Kin Groups And Social Structure

An introductory survey of anthropological theory on kinship and social structure; case studies included discussion of the Kariera four-section system as an example of a symmetrical alliance system.

Application of cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis to the study of some 250 different cultures.

One of the world's most eminent social anthropologists draws upon his many years of study and research in the field of kinship and social organization to review the development of anthropological theory and method from Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) to anthropologists of the 1960s. It is the central argument of this book that the structuralist theory and method developed by British and American anthropologists in the study of kinship and social organization is the direct descendant of Morgan's researches. The volume starts with a re-examination of Morgan's work. Professor Fortes demonstrates how a tradition of misinterpretation has disguised the true import of Morgan's discoveries. He follows with a detailed analysis of the work of Rivers and Radcliffe-Brown and the generation of anthropologists inspired by them. The author states his own point of view as it has developed in the framework of modern structuralist theory, with ethnographic examples examined in depth. He shows that the social relations and institutions conventionally grouped under the rubric of kinship and social organization belong simultaneously to two complementary domains of social structure, the familial and the political. Meyer Fortes' contribution to the field of anthropology can best be understood in the context of balance of forces between these domains of the personal and public. In the latter part of the book, he gives detailed attention to the principal conceptual issues that have confronted research and theory in the study of kinship and social organizations since Morgan's time. He shows that kinship institutions are autonomous, not mere by-products of economic requirements, and demonstrates the moral base of kinship in the rule of amity.

The papers reprinted in this volume have been selected with two considerations in mind: they record ethnographical observations from my field work among the Tallensi and in Ashanti that are not easily accessible elsewhere but continue to be useful for comparative studies and as background to current research in Ghana; and they represent applications of methods of analysis and schemes of interpretation that were emerging in British structural anthropology at the time of their publication. The Monographs on Social Anthropology were established in 1940 and aim to publish results of modem anthropological research of primary interest to specialists.

W. H. R. Rivers, who has been called 'the founder of the modern study of social organization', exerted an immense influence on his contemporaries and successors. This volume reprints three of his lectures, delivered in 1913 and first published in 1914, which provide a short and brilliant exposition of his theoretical approach, and are exemplary of his handling of ethnographic evidence. His theme is the relationship between kinship terminologies and social organization, more particularly forms of marriage, a subject still of lively theoretical interest. Also included is the same author's The Genealogical Method of Anthropological Enquiry, first published in 1910, a classic of anthropological methodology, and Professor Raymond Firth of the London School of Economics and Professor David Schneider of the University of Chicago provide commentaries estimating the past and present importance of Rivers in British and American Anthropology respectively.